Rig Shots by Curtis March of VolkWear
My friend Curtis March just put together a camera rig for taking rolling shots of cars and I was fortunate enough to be the first car he tested the rig out on. The pictures turned out incredible, so I wanted to share them here as well as write about how these photos were taken, as I think the process behind the pictures is pretty cool too.
Curtis is a man of many talents and photography is mostly just a hobby for him, but he’s quite talented. You can check out more of his photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65640087@N04/. He also runs a clothing & apparel company called Volkwear that makes Volkswagen & Audi themed apparel, and the shirts he makes are pretty cool (I have a few myself). As if that weren’t enough, Curtis is also a race instructor with Pro Autosports in Phoenix and also mountain bikes a lot.
I also took a quick snap of the rig setup itself, because it’s pretty cool if you’ve never seen how this is done. There is a long “boom” that holds the camera far enough away from the car and keeps it steady (much like a floating tripod). There is then an arm at the end of the boom where you mount the camera and adjust the angle. Once the camera is setup and focused, we’d then take the shot. Curtis used a very long exposure (anywhere from 10-30 seconds) at a high f-stop. The car isn’t actually running in these photos, instead it is simply rolling down a hill at a few mph – the long exposure makes it look as if I were going very fast, but in reality the car is barely moving. After the photo has been taken, Curtis edited out the boom/camera gear in Photoshop but did minimal other edits to get the photos you see above.